The veteran Indian spinner, Ravi Ashwin was going out of focus in the past year or so due to his frequent injuries and ordinary outings. One of the other reasons being him not being successful on foreign tours, but now he has made a terrific return to Test cricket in Visakhapatnam against South Africa by picking up a 7-fer in the first innings.

R Ashwin

After delivering some early blows on Thursday afternoon to leave the Proteas reeling, Ashwin would have expected to take some early wickets on Day 3 to put the chances of Proteas’ win and draw out of the game. Well, that didn’t happen and he conceded 128 runs for his five wickets as Dean Elgar and Quinton de Kock put up a solid resistance. But yet, it was a five-wicket haul and the 27th for the man in the longer format.

Ashwin came to the post-day press conference after the day’s play on Day 3 and came with a witty answer to a tricky question. One of the reporters reminded him about his saying recently that he stopped watching cricket and asked him about the reason for the same. To that, the Tamil Nadu spinner first said that he has two kids who don’t sleep well in the night and hence keeps their father on his toes as well.

But then he gave the actual answer as he said, “I felt like…Every time I watched the game on TV, I felt like I wanted to play the game and I was missing out of it. It is very natural I think. Everybody goes through that. That’s not be all and end all. I generally try to do a few other things in my life as well. Books, a bit of archaeology work, stuff like that.”

Ashwin also said to have a deep interest in archaeology. It was once even the career option for the bowler who is approaching 350 Test wickets as the fourth Indian bowler. He also has four Test centuries to his name as well.